


i'm asking you baby ('cause i'm tired of asking myself)

by remembermyfic



Series: and it's called black magic [3]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Magic, Multi, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28846905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remembermyfic/pseuds/remembermyfic
Summary: It takes her more than a few beats to get her own senses back and she immediately turns to Google.magic premonition feeling others emotionsThere’s only one answer that comes up: soulmates.Ryan gets on the phone.--CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE.
Relationships: Jordan Eberle/Taylor Hall/Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Series: and it's called black magic [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1337263
Comments: 5
Kudos: 56





	i'm asking you baby ('cause i'm tired of asking myself)

**Author's Note:**

> If you know them, stop reading and hit the x button. 
> 
> To my cheerleaders who know who they are and listened to me bitch for months about how long this fic got.

Ryan is breaking the thirteenth good luck-infused fan gift of the week when she knows for absolute and certain fact that Jordan Eberle is injured. She literally drops the chocolate bar – a gift for Klef, which makes Ryan laugh because she knows Klef would prefer pretzels to chocolate – and blinks down at it. It’s a convoluted mess of emotions, pain and concern and frustration and her own very obvious confusion. It takes her more than a few beats to get her own senses back and she immediately turns to Google.

_magic premonition feeling others emotions_

There’s only one answer that comes up: soulmates.

Ryan gets on the phone.

Ryan meets Jordan because she literally runs into him.

“Sorry,” he says immediately, and simultaneously with her. They share a quick laugh.

“Can I help you find something?”

He laughs. “Nah. I know this place pretty well.”

Ryan feels herself blush. “Right. You played here.”

“I did.” He waves the stick in his hand. “Still hoping to, honestly, if I can get this handled.”

“This?” Ryan asks, her senses already tingling and her hand already reaching out. Rubber, is what she feels, before he’s yanking the stick out of the way.

“Um.” He’s blushing and taken aback and Ryan shakes herself.

“Oh. I’m on staff here. Able.”

His eyes narrow. “How do I know you’re not going to curse the stick.”

“Because that would be incredibly irresponsible. Curses aren’t real.”

“What?”

“Okay, they’re real but they’re hard. Too hard for me to do without you being suspicious.” She wiggles her fingers. “Come on. You can give it over now or we can walk down the hall to my office if it’ll make you feel better.”

Jordan hands over the stick.

Ryan hums as she runs her fingers over the top. There’s a bump, no larger than her fingernail, right close to the tip. Not enough to do damage, but enough to be irritating. She pinches her fingers and pulls it off like it’s an irritating burr in her shoe. “Should be good as new.”

Their fingers brush when she hands the stick back. The spark surprises her but thankfully, doesn’t make her jump. Jordan still eyes her for a moment before he says, “Thank you.”

“Anytime! Have a good game!”

She doesn’t run, per se, but she’s pretty sure it’s a close thing.

“I don’t know much more than you do,” Alex offers, which is _bullshit_ because Alex is literally the only other person Ryan knows that has a soulbond and she had to jump through too many hoops to even get the other woman’s number.

Okay fine. She had to endure Connor trying to convince her to go freelance for the eight millionth time in order to get Alex’s number. It is a sacrifice. Connor is persuasive on a good day, and it’s twice as bad when she feels like Ryan’s talents are being wasted. Which they are not. Edmonton is _fucked_. Ryan has literally never seen so many wards woven into the actual foundation of any building in her entire life to absolutely no avail.

“Dylan’s the one that’s done all of the research.”

“So you think it’s a soulbond.”

“I don’t fucking know, Nuge. I barely know about my own soulbond, as it turns out.”

“What do you mean-?”

“Dylan’s just better at research. You would not believe the number of Reddit threads he went through trying to figure out what the fuck happened.”

“He plays hockey.”

Ryan hates that she can hear Alex roll her eyes. “He has a lot of downtime. He knows so much. It’s actually kind of irritating and a major gap in our training.”

“Okay,” Ryan says with all of the patience she can muster. “And what has that taught you?”

The gust of air is too damn loud in her ear. Ryan regrets making the call and just barely resists banging her head in the remnants of Klef’s chocolate bar.

“It sounds like a soulbond, Nuge.”

It’s Ryan’s turn to blow out a gust of air.

It comes out the next day: Jordan Eberle, out with a shoulder injury. Not that the Islanders announce it. Ryan knows because said shoulder has been keeping her up since midnight, a dull uncomfortable ache. It makes her cranky long before she hears that the wards around Draisaitl’s stall are acting up again, and before the eight consecutive chimes on her phone between the parking lot and her office.

_Don’t freak,_ Alex’s message starts. Ryan heavily resents the illegality of murder. _Told Dyls. He has thoughts._

Those thoughts, the beginning of them anyway, are the next seven messages.

_Hi it’s Dylan_

_Strome_

_From the Blackhawks_

_Alex said u had qs bout soulmates_

_Y do magic people kno nothing bout soulmates_

_Its magic love_

Ryan rolls her eyes. Six useless messages. But the seventh has a shocking amount of proper grammar and spelling.

_No one knows how it happens and everyone experiences it differently. Al and I get feelings. Kind of. They’re mostly fuzzy, like a buzz in the back of your head. People on Reddit totally talk about actually communicating through the bond. Some have talked about like, sharing migraines._

Ryan’s eyebrow shoots up. _Sharing migraines?_

_Alex got headaches when I had a concussion._

It isn’t the same, but it’s pretty damn close. _Eberle’s UBI is his shoulder._

_How do u kno?_

_How do you think?_

She gets the eye emoji back, followed immediately by the three dots disappearing so Ryan takes the opportunity to pocket her phone and head to the Oilers’ locker room. The wards won’t fix themselves.

She comes back an hour later to a message: _Holy shit._

Beneath it is a link to tier three bonds and Ryan settles in, still grumpy and with another dose of painkillers and her phone.

It takes her an hour and a half to really get through to the meat of what a “tier three” bond is. She feels like she assumes Kassian’s victims do when he slams them into the boards. She has an uncomfortable tension headache and her shoulder has moved from simple discomfort to an actual real ache.

_Take your painkillers,_ she finds herself thinking aggressively.

She gets a wave of stubbornness back that almost knocks her to the floor. Jesus Christ, fucking hockey players. She also berates herself. She should know better than to think thoughts that strongly given everything she’s just learned.

Tier Three.

The kind of bond where she literally experiences what her soulmates experience.

Ryan kind of wants to die, kind of wants to dance and kind of wants to bash her head through a wall. She’s not entirely sure where all of the emotions come from, and isn’t that an issue in and of itself.

_Please take the painkillers_. She closes her eyes this time, tries to relax. It’s so much, and it would be so much better if Jordan fucking Eberle would just take his painkillers. It’s not heroic to avoid painkillers in the face of injury and she tries to make that perfectly clear through her own emotions and the churning of her stomach.

He takes the painkillers.

Ryan makes the scariest phone call of her life on a dreary November morning. She very carefully ignores the hoops she had to jump through to get it. She’s going to regret asking Connor to reach out, she just doesn’t quite know how yet.

“Hello?”

Ryan takes a deep breath. “Hello, my name is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. I do magic work-”

“I remember you,” Jordan interrupts and honestly, Ryan’s just glad he doesn’t sound particularly suspicious. “Did you actually curse my stick?”

She finds herself barking out a weird laugh. “I had your stick for thirty seconds.”

“I’m kidding,” he says, but it’s careful now.

Ryan forces herself to blow out a sigh. “What do you know about soulmates?”

The silence stretches long enough that she’s concerned he’s hung up. “I know someone with soulbonded parents.”

It startles Ryan. Soulbonds aren’t discussed, considered too rare and too private. It’s why Dylan had sent her Reddit links and not studies.

“Why?”

Her stomach drops. “Your injury,” she says. “It’s your shoulder.”

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Who told you?”

“No one.” She feels tired now, fingers kneading at her head. Her shoulder is starting up again too. “Take your painkillers.”

“What?”

“When you don’t take the Tylenol, my shoulder hurts.”

That silence falls again. ‘That was you?” Then, when she lets the silence linger, “Last night. I didn’t need them, but it felt like someone was screaming at me to take them.”

“Yeah,” she says on the sigh. “A tier three bond lets you feel what your soulmate feels.”

Jordan swears, vehemently, and Ryan is inclined to agree. “What does that even mean?”

“I’ll send you some links.”

There’s another couple of beats. “This doesn’t mean-”

“We barely know each other. I took a jinx off of your stick once and fate got it twisted.”

“Can we break it?”

“I don’t know. As far as I’ve found, no one’s ever tried.” She digs her nails into her palm.

“Ouch,” he says mildly. The laughter that leaks out of Ryan is hysterical to give it the best definition, but she does loosen her fist. “Huh.”

“I’ll send you some links,” she repeats.

“That would be great.”

_It’s weirder now that I’m aware of it_.

The message is waiting for her when she returns from checking the ice, systematically dismantling some good intentioned charms some fans had left behind. She binks at it, trying to shake off the post magic fuzz.

Oh. Right.

_What do you mean?_

The response comes fast. _Whatever you were doing just now, you were so focused._

Oh.

_Breaking_ , she replies with tentative fingers. _Fans think they’re being helpful._

_That’s a thing?_

She almost laughs. _There’s so much magic behind the scenes that has very little to do with the players._

_I don’t think I’ve ever met some of our team Able._

It sparks a conversation that lasts the majority of the day, if sporadically. Ryan finds out he’s sharp, with a quick wit that does make her laugh out loud once or twice. She appreciates his curiosity too, along with the fact that he doesn’t bring the soulmate thing up. Not directly.

Not until he says, _I want tacos and I think that’s your fault_.

On impulse, Ryan takes a picture of her kitchen island strewn with taco fixings. _I’ve been looking forward to it all day._

_So it is your fault._

She’s smiling. It’s surprisingly fond. _Might be_.

_Like I said. Weird._

She’s been ignoring it. Well, not ignoring it so much as actively trying to learn things about him without using the bond. She’s ahead of him on the research, she has the Able thing going for her, she doesn’t want to abuse either. Especially when his comment about breaking the bond still feels fresh in her head.

That doesn’t mean she’s oblivious to the strong wave of decisiveness that floats over the bond. Or she assumes it’s the bond because the next message she receives is his DoorDash order.

They learn how to live with the bond. Kind of. It’s probably an exaggeration if she’s honest. It all kind of starts to get blurry when Ryan finds herself smiling for no reason in the middle of the day, warmth sitting heavy in her chest. Half the time it’s because of a text message, a dumb little thing that makes her laugh or smile and it hits her hard enough that she slams down on the bond.

Blocking had been one of the first things Ryan had looked up. Sure, it had been from Connor’s advice - and a link. Mostly, Ryan’s just glad they did it.

“Privacy,” she’d told him at the time. “Especially because we don’t know each other.”

There had been a sting from his end of the bond, frustrated maybe. “I can be respectful.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she promised, sent conviction down the bond with her words. “We met because of hockey. We bonded because I fixed your stick. We both deserve the right to share things at a pace we’re each comfortable with, not because the bond makes us.”

And because Connor’s message had pointed out that there were secrets that were better left kept. Secrets like the fact that Ryan misses a man she still barely feels like she knows, but leaves her sweet good morning messages from the east coast. And calls her on roadies now, like they are actually dating and not trying to navigate a fucking soulbond.

It’s a lot, is what Ryan’s saying, and he is so far from the person she expected it from. He’s always struck her as a little quieter, a little more reserved - a man that doesn’t love the spotlight but understands and recognizes that it’s part of being really good at what he does.

She knows nothing and everything about him and her heart does not stop thumping through their every phone call. She wears all but a permanent smile because he texts her constantly.

It’s not love. It can’t be because they live thousands of miles apart and have spent zero time actually functioning together but.

But.

Ryan meets Taylor Hall because she’s bonded to Jordan Eberle.

Which is to say: the Coyotes play the Oilers and Taylor Hall shows up in her office door with an NDA and a stubborn expression.

She signs the NDA and locks the door behind him.

“Ebby and I have been together forever,” he says and while Ryan had expected the statement it comes as a complete surprise. It all clicks into place lightning-fast.

“Your parents are tier three bonded.”

Taylor’s smile is proud, but there’s a sadness around the edges. He wants that, she realizes; a bond like his parents with the man he loves. And now… well now there’s Ryan, the second half of the thing he’s wanted for almost a decade. “I don’t know much about bonds.”

It makes her laugh and lean forward on her desk. “Turns out, no one knows much of anything about bonds.”

His responding look of confusion should not be attractive. She shouldn’t even be noting him as attractive. She’s bonded to his boyfriend in a way both men associate with marriage and families.

“Jordan and I are still figuring it out. With some help.”

“Help?” He’s intrigued and Ryan can’t help but think that maybe soulbonds are even more private than she’d realized.

“I have two friends that are bonded,” she says slowly, almost diplomatically. She’s not sure how much she’s allowed to tell. She’s not sure if she’s already broken some sort of soulbonded code.

Her phone vibrates. _Can you worry quieter?_

Ryan can’t help the snort she releases. She’s getting lax with her shielding again.

_Sick of me already?_

She rolls her eyes and picks up her phone. “Sorry.”

There’s fondness in the bond, but Ryan is pretty sure it’s not directed at her. It’s confirmed when she sneaks a glance up to see Taylor smiling down at his phone with the same feeling written all over his face. Her heart thumps weirdly in her chest.

_Some conversations are still meant to be private._ She sends the text with a goofy-looking emoji because it isn’t meant to be ruthlessly scolding. It’s an important reminder given he hadn’t confirmed his relationship with her in the first place.

“Jordan?”

Ryan looks up and hates that she feels caught. “It’s…”

“A lot.”

She blows out a breath.

Taylor pauses; Taylor looks at her. “Bonding is a lot,” he says carefully. “Carries some big-“

“Yes.” She doesn’t want to hear him talk about the assumptions surrounding bonds. She doesn’t want to talk about romance or distance or the fact that she’s sitting across from her bondmate’s boyfriend.

Her phone buzzes. She ignores it.

Taylor’s looking at her with too much awareness.

“It’s very early days,” she says and hopes it encompasses all the things she doesn’t want to verbalize. It’s a blatant lie. She gets the feeling he knows it.

He watches her for another beat, maybe two, then stands and offers his hand. His big hand, that tapers into a strong wrist and thick forearm and those biceps…

“I’ll see you around, Ryan.”

In the back of her head, just to the left of where Jordan’s bond sits, it feels as much like a threat as it does a promise.

_Make him stop._

_You made a groupchat for this?_

_Taylor this is abuse of knowledge._

_You said you wanted her number to ask about bonds._

_Yes! Bonds!_

_The thing that means she can definitely make you not spend your bye week in fucking Arizona._

**I don’t think it’s anyone's decision but my own where I choose to spend my five days off.**

Well. At least this explains the irritation that’s been humming in her head for a couple of hours now. It made the wards uneven and frustrated and made Ryan’s job a little harder than she’d like.

**Isn’t Arizona warm?**

_What does that have to do with anything?_

**I live in Edmonton** , she types as half a reminder. **A vacation somewhere warm would be a blessing.** Then after a moment. **Where else would he go?**

_Edmonton,_ is Taylor’s answer. She knows it’s Taylor, with absolute certainty. She’s not convinced on how she feels about Taylor having her number, let alone how she feels about the fact that he got it from Jordan.

**Why would you come here for anything other than hockey?**

There’s no answer right away, nor in the next five minutes and Ryan puts her phone aside. She does still have a job to do, and one that doesn’t have near as much lounging around as theirs does. It isn’t until later that night she hears from either of them, separate from the myriad of emotions she gets from Jordan throughout the day. She’s trying not to examine those much either, if only because as the bond cements they should be able to have entire conversations without the use of any other support.

Her phone rings almost the second she steps through the door. “Hi.”

“Hi. You home?”

It dawns on her that he knows she is. It takes her maybe too off-guard to think he’d held off calling until she was. “Just.”

“Good. You got a minute?”

“Can I put you on speaker?”

She does at his agreement and then he’s off: “About Taylor. He’s being a little shit, you know? He’s weird about it when our bye weeks don’t line up and he’s weirder now because of the bond thing and how his parents are bonded and-”

Ryan lets him ramble, now that she’s got the crux of what’s going on. It leaves a cold pebble of dread in her stomach that she resolutely ignores. Even if the internet tells of fairytales and her friends are happily coupled up with their soulmates.

“-So you’ll have to excuse him.”

“I’m not upset?” she says, because that’s also the crux of the matter. “Go to Arizona. It’s warm there.”

She might be more than a little over the cold.

There are a couple of odd beats of silence. “Why don’t you come?”

“What?” she says on an incredulous laugh. “It’s not our bye week. And I work anyway.”

“A vacation,” he replies, though doesn’t sound much warmer to the idea. There’s something foggy lurking too, something that makes her think of plotting and surprises and bright shiny ideas just poking up from the ground. “Edmonton is cold.”

“It’s fucking freezing,” she says, laughing again. “It’s your time away. Go spend it with your boyfriend.”

He calls her a few days later, after an hour of unease, confusion and a soft frustration that feels weirdly muted when compared to the rest. Ryan’s wiped from it. The emotional rollercoaster is not as much fun as a real one.

“What are we doing?”

It takes more willpower than Ryan knew she had to not spit out a ‘what the fuck?’ “What do you mean?”

“Fate thinks we’re good together. That’s the point of the bond.”

It’s complicated. Convoluted even. Both Connor and Alex vehemently maintain a bond is not a cheat code and neither of them have a top level bond, much to Connor’s dismay. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about it, how none of her research has talked about bonds as anything other than romantic; about how sometimes it still feels like he’s flirting, like their FaceTime calls are too often to be anything else.

And then she remembers Taylor.

Ryan is not and refuses to be the reason Jordan and Taylor break up. The bond is incredible and fascinating, but she also puts a lot of stock in choice. Jordan chose Taylor. Jordan and Taylor have worked for years at their relationship. It’s fundamentally unfair to think that magic and fate could intervene and make it all work in a snap.

“Ryan?”

Right. Jordan.

“I don’t-” She cuts herself off. It’s an honest statement - “I don’t know what I want” - but it’s also a terrifying one. “What do you want?”

It’s so quiet on the other end of the phone. Only the buzzing of the bond gives her any hint that he hasn’t hung up. Finally, he says, “I want you to come to Arizona.”

Ryan can’t help the shiver that drills down her spine. She wants to ask why he wants her in Arizona. She’s also terrified of his answer.

Jordan clears his throat. There’s reluctance in the back of her mind and in the way he says, “You took a risk once, when you called me.”

_Take another. Be that brave again._

She drops her head to her desk.

“Ryan.”

She sucks in a deep breath. “Let me see if I can get the time.”

She gets the time. It’s the easiest request she’s been granted. Her boss looks legitimately happy.

“It’s because you literally never take time off,” Tyler says, inspecting nails she’d just ranted about being too short - a slight on the NHL and how longer nails break in her gloves, no matter how much she loves them. “Like. I try and bribe you into a girls’ day the singular time I’m in during the season and I can’t even get that.” She tilts her head to the side. “Who would have known all it would take is the promise of a threesome.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Oh honey, you are not that stupid.”

Ryan groans. “It’s… I want to figure out this bond.”

“In Arizona. With his boyfriend.” Tyler rolls her eyes at the look on Ryan’s face. “It’s like… It might be the worst-kept secret in the league.”

“I had to sign an NDA!”

“You’re not team,” Tyler says dismissively. “Part of ‘the brotherhood’ and all that.”

Ryan almost laughs at Tyler’s air quotes. She also understands what Tyler’s getting at, the whole notion of it being different when you’re a player. And, Tyler and Taylor were drafted together.

“It’s not a threesome.”

Tyler rolls over. “Oh my dear sweet summer child.”

“Are you ever not thinking about sex?”

“Do you ever think outside the box?”

“I literally work with magic, my entire life is outside the box.”

“Do yourself a favour then,” Tyler says, “and Google polyamory. Let me know what you find.”

“Tyler, they’re literally together.”

“Ryan, you’re literally bonded.” She sighs. “Look just… keep an open mind, okay? Not everything is either-or.”

Not everything is grey either. “I don't want to get hurt. And there’s still no indication we could break it.”

Tyler Seguin is the league’s whipping girl. Her past is colourful and no one has let her live it down. But when it comes down to it, it’s the image Tyler wants them to have. The Tyler that Ryan knows is this: compassionate, serious, real. She’s a woman that has been chewed up and spit out and has created an entirely different personality for them to abuse. She keeps herself safe.

So when Tyler fixes a serious, vulnerable gaze on Ryan, it doesn’t matter that it’s through a phone screen. Ryan stops and pays attention.

“You can’t protect yourself forever,” she says. “You went out on a limb even calling him. You’ve trusted him so far. But this last thing? Actually facing him? Now you turtle.”

Ryan swallows. She hates when Tyler’s right.

And Tyler is definitely right.

“Why am I always the brave one?”

“Because honey, can’t trust the boys to do it. Go book your plane tickets.”

She books her plane tickets and sends a screen cap to Jordan.

Excitement sparks when he sees it.

She still tries to temper her expectations.

She doesn’t feel very successful.

It’s an embarrassing shock to get off the plane and experience the difference between Edmonton and Phoenix. She’s already feeling too warm in her thick sweater. She’s reluctant to take it off. It feels like armour. It’s irritating that it feels like armour.

“Ryan!”

She has a split second heart attack because that is Taylor Hall yelling for her attention in the middle of the goddamn airport. Then she remembers that Phoenix is not Edmonton. Hockey is different here.

“Ebby’s here,” he says and opens his arms like he’s offering a hug. Ryan takes it because he’s massive and she’s jittery and doesn’t tell him the bond already knows where Jordan is. She absolutely also didn’t need to know that Taylor is a spectacular hugger.

“Come on,” he says when he releases her. “Airplanes always leave me exhausted.”

“Yet you chose a job that requires them,” she finds herself saying and is grateful when all Taylor does is grin. She offers him a bit of a sheepish smile and says, “I’m mostly starving.”

At least, she’s pretty sure that’s what the gnawing in her stomach is. Otherwise, it has to be Jordan and Ryan is very firmly not thinking about the nerves that have been steadily compounding her own for days.

“Well, we can solve that. What are you in the mood for?”

Ryan’s pretty grateful for his chatter as they head through the airport and doesn’t even argue when he tugs her duffle from her shoulder. She’s also grateful for the laid back way he moves through the crowd.

“Arizona looks good on you,” she finds herself saying, interrupting him without meaning to. For a moment it feels out of place, like it wasn’t really something she could say. Taylor just laughs.

“Ebby said the same thing.” Then there’s a hitch in his step and Ryan knows what’s coming next. “Huh. Maybe you got it from him.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledges quietly, because she can’t be totally sure herself. It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like it came from somewhere else. But she can’t be sure. “But you’ve been in the league a while.”

He makes a noise. “Did you just call me old?”

Ryan snorts, then breaks out into laughter that is maybe a little hysterical but a lot of a relief.

“Marleau and Chara both play in this league. Jagr played well into his forties. Jumbo Joe!” Taylor tries to say over her laughter and it’s enough to have Jordan climbing out of the car when they get closer.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nuge just called me old!”

His indignance sets her off again.

Taylor’s house is gorgeous. It’s all Spanish architecture and wide open spaces.

“It’s beautiful.”

Taylor smiles sheepishly. “Yeah well.”

There’s a twinge, a weird sort of lightbulb moment. “Your mom decorated.”

“Ebs!”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You obviously thought it!”

“He…” Ryan pauses, frowning, sorting through her head. “That… It wasn’t him.”

“It wasn’t?”

Ryan has spent months with Jordan in her head. She knows how he feels. She knows how he makes her feel. This had felt like the early days, the moments of weird knowledge before she knew what a soulbond even was. “No.”

The silence is charged, with what, Ryan couldn’t even begin to put her finger on. Jordan and Taylor seem to be doing their own sort of weird communication and it makes Ryan feel like she’s on the outside. Again or still, she really doesn’t know. Instead she turns to the picturesque windows, the sparkling pool beyond it. It’s a vacation, she reminds herself, with tag-alongs sure, at least in some sense of the word, but a vacation nonetheless.

She makes herself turn back, to put a smile on. “I was promised food, and then I think I have a date with that pool.”

The flash of heat is unexpected, but is gone just as quickly. It doesn’t feel wholly like Jordan either and she finds herself off-kilter just minutes after finding it again. Is that what this is going to be like?

“Sure!” Taylor breaks in. “Kitchen’s this way with a wide variety of take out menus-”

Okay, so maybe the grocery store is the first stop.

_Is threeway bonding a thing?_

She sends it to Connor because she is not stupid. Even if it does go to Jack and then somehow make it back around, it’ll take long enough that she’ll have a way of answering questions and finding snappy retorts to comments.

_Never heard of it,_ is Connor’s reply. _First a tier three and now a threeway? What kind of aptitude do you have?_

Soulbonds are not about aptitude but she’s not about to correct Connor. It’s a pride thing.

_Maybe?_

Her phone rings.

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I mean I don’t know,” Ryan answers. “I mean that it might be.”

“It might be.”

Ryan huffs. “Jordan’s been living in my head. At this point, I feel like I know him better than I know myself.”

“Okay,” Connor says when Ryan pauses for more than a breath.

“But there are things that I know that I shouldn’t know that are not coming from Jordan.”

Connor is silent.

“A threeway bond.”

“It’s the only explanation I’ve got. How else do I know without asking or checking that Taylor keeps frozen beer steins? Or where the keys are to his SUV? Or where to find the pool noodles. Which, by the way, who keeps pool noodles in the spare bedroom when there’s a pool house?”

“Taylor Hall, apparently. A man you might be threeway bonded with.”

Fuck.

“They’re in a relationship. Tyler told me to Google polyamory.”

“Seguin?”

Ryan laughs a little. “Yeah.”

“How the hell did she put it together?”

“I think she clued into not wanting to make them choose more than any bond knowledge.”

Connor’s sigh is a little irritated. “Tier three and a threeway.”

“If it helps, I didn’t choose it.”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

Nothing. The answer is nothing.

_Not sure it’s a real thing_ , is Connor’s text.

Ryan drops her head into her hands.

“Why are you not asleep?”

Ryan moves her feet through the pool, slow and steady. It’s still warmer than Edmonton, not that it’s hard, so she’s taking advantage. “Couldn’t.”

Jordan settles beside her, drops his feet in too. They’re silent for a while before Ryan says, “Was this a good idea?”

Ryan hums her confusion, hoping to hell he can’t also hear the way her heart has started beating triple time. She thinks if he wants to break the bond she might have to get on a plane pronto. She won’t stay here if he doesn’t want her to.

“All three of us, together. Taylor kept pushing for it and he can be persistent-”

“I said yes, Jordan.”

He’s silent for a moment. “You said yes to the bond, too. Before you shut it down.”

“Shielding is healthy.” And it’s saved her ass. She’s grateful for shielding.

“I never have.”

Her head comes up. “What?”

Jordan shrugs. “What is there to hide? You know I’m in love with Taylor. You have to know I’m falling in love with you.”

Ryan stops listening after that. It’s not a conscious choice. “Hold on.”

“What?” He’s exasperated now, like she’s supposed to know all of this with concrete certainty when there hasn’t even been an inkling of it- “Ryan, I haven’t been hiding.”

And here Tyler had called her the brave one.

“How?”

Much to her relief, Jordan shrugs. “I honestly have no idea. I play hockey, I don’t study soulbonds.”

“Strome does. In Chicago.” It’s filler while she tries to figure out what’s going on in her head. She doesn’t see the use in denying her own feelings, the ones she’s been shoving to the back of her head for months now. Her shields had fallen to tatters the moment the words had been spoken. “What about Taylor?”

“He uh. He actually found an answer. Have you heard of polyamory?”

Ryan almost laughs. She holds it back by sheer force of will. “So what, we share you? He gets Tuesdays and Thursdays and I-”

Jordan takes her hand. She feels it in him too, this scared tentative thing that’s sitting just beneath the thread she’s always seen as their bond. It shivers when Jordan pokes at it, shrinks away.

“I didn’t know what it was,” he says quietly. “But it’s not you.”

“No,” she agrees.

“But it’s familiar,” he continues. “I’ve felt it all my life. Metaphorically speaking.”

Taylor. Like that moment when she’d first arrived, the absolute knowledge and almost the phantom memory of his mother in his space, helping him pick a couch and a coffee table.

“Does he know?”

“No,” Jordan says. “I think he’s convinced himself it’s not true. I’m already bonded.”

“There aren’t many threeway bonds out there. I checked.”

“So did I.” He shrugs and offers her a tentative smile. “So we’re just not supposed to try?”

“You have to know it’s insane.”

“Yes.”

She sighs. “We don’t even know if we work.”

“Yes we do. There’s just one piece left.”

She doesn’t pull away when he slides his hand beneath her ponytail and lets him pull her in. His lips fit easily against hers. It’s not perfect, it’s their first kiss, but Ryan can feel it zip through the bond and tug on her stomach. “Oh.”

Jordan angles her head to press his forehead to hers. “We already know we work. Now we have to get Taylor on board.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

It falls, as it has a habit of doing, to Ryan.

“Hey,” she says the next morning, sidling up to him at his kitchen island. “I want to try something.”

He eyes her. “Like golf?”

She shakes her head. “Your parents are bonded, right?”

“Yes.” The word is drawn out, wary. Ryan doesn’t blame him.

“Do they know anything about latent bonds?”

Taylor sucks in a deep breath, then releases it. “There are stories. Myths.”

“What makes them myths?”

“No one talks about it.”

Ryan nods. “Jordan thinks you have a latent bond.”

Taylor’s eyes light up, but it dims just as quickly. “Yours isn’t latent.”

She nods. “Can I try something?”

“Something?”

She telegraphs it the whole time she leans in. He’s taller than her, though not by much, but by enough that she has to press up on her toes a little and lean into him. She can hear his breath catch. He doesn’t move when she brushes her mouth over his, gently, feather light, but when she pushes in a little, firms up the kiss, his hands come up to her hips.

He doesn’t push her away.

“Hey.”

It’s Jordan, right beside him, already reaching to turn Taylor his way. Ryan lets him go, lets him fall so easily into Jordan. Jordan catches him, of course, kisses him the same way she did and Ryan, who’s hand is still firmly encased in Taylor’s, feels the bond tremble. She steps up to him, slides her hands around to spread across his stomach and presses her mouth to the back of his neck.

The bond snaps into place.

“Holy shit.”

Ryan steps back immediately. It’s not because she doesn’t think he wants her - his reaction to her kiss says at the very least he’s attracted to her. But bonding, she vividly remembers, is different. It’s overwhelming to have one person in your head, let alone two.

“Taylor?”

Ryan finds herself swallowing around the lump that’s formed in her throat.

“You knew.”

“Not really,” Jordan answers, his hands tight on Taylor’s arms. “Ryan knew your mom was here.”

She’s shaking her head long before he turns to face her. “I didn’t know. Not until Jordan pointed it out.”

“We weren’t bonded.” Taylor’s gripping Jordan and he looks stunned. “We’ve been together forever and never bonded.”

“It wasn’t just us,” Jordan says and finds Ryan’s gaze. “It couldn’t be just us.”

Ryan’s knees go weak when Taylor turns and reaches for her. “It’s-”

“We talked about it,” Taylor tells her and he sounds so dazed. “Ebby and I. Talked about what it would be like to have you, too. Weird with the bond maybe but this way…”

There is no ‘weird with the bond’. There’s just ‘the bond’. The bond that all three of them share. “Latent.”

Jordan barks out a laugh. “Apparently.”

“Or,” Taylor argues, considering. “Just needed the right jolt.”

“It’s not a cheat code,” Ryan finds herself warning them. “Jordan and I took work-”

“Ryan.” They’re laughing at her. She can feel it clear as day from both of them, as much as she can read it on their faces. “We didn’t ask you down here because you needed a vacation.”

“You do,” Taylor says, his arm snaking around Jordan’s shoulders now. “But it wasn’t just that.”

“You talked about me. About this.”

Jordan’s eyes are dark. “Yes.”

“You want this.”

_You want me._

“Ryan,” Taylor says with conviction. She’s pretty sure that’s the first time he’s used her name. “Come here.”

She goes.

_So_ , she texts Connor from the lounge in the Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport. _Threeway bonds are real._

_I hate you_.

Ryan leans back in her seat with a smile on her face.


End file.
